Three journeys in one ... Judith Kerr in 2005.
Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Summer is upon us and with it our latest blog series, which this year takes the theme of journeys in literature. As readers of previous series, such as A book for the beach or Baddies in books, will know, it’s an excuse to revisit old favourites and study them in a new light. My choice is a novel I discovered as an adult and read with children, which is why I am doubly fond of it.

Judith Kerr reads from When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

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Published in 1971, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is the first in a trilogy of autobiographical novels that the bestselling author and illustrator wrote to explain her early life to her own children. We first meet her alter ego, Anna, as a precocious nine-year-old whose only problem appears to be negotiating the consequences of having a famous writer for a father. (“You hardly ever hear of two famous people in the same family. It makes me rather sad.”) But soon that life is gone, as first her father and then Anna, her mother and brother flee to Switzerland, then on to France and finally to England.

Though on the surface this is a simple refugee story, seen through the eyes of a small girl, there are really three journeys in Pink Rabbit. The first is a literal one, in which the problems of temporary lodgings, making new friends and adapting to strange languages and cultures are described with a stoical humour.

In Switzerland, Anna is taught to yodel and the boys pelt her with pebbles. “It’s what they do here,” says her brother Max. “When they’re in love with anyone they throw things at them. Really Anna should feel honoured.” A few days later Anna sees Max in the village, throwing unripe apples at a girl. “Max was very adaptable,” she concludes.

In Paris, Anna’s impractical mother distracts her from a homework crisis by buying her a luxurious, chestnut-filled pastry, a small act of impulsive kindness that means they cannot afford fish for supper. “They had mussels instead and it did not matter,” says the third-person narrator, with a default cheerfulness which, for an adult reader, becomes increasingly ironic through the novel.

On arrival in England at night, their train stops, for the umpteenth time, at a small ill-lit station.

Where are we?” asked Mama.Anna spelled out the name on an illuminated sign.“Bovril,” she said.“It can’t be, said Max. “the last place we stopped was called Bovril.”

Underlying this comedic evocation of life on the move is a darker journey. As the children grow and adapt, the adults diminish. Max and Anna will learn to read English billboards, but their father will never be able to regain the status, income and self-respect that he lost with his native language. The family teeters on the edge of destitution, dependent on the kindness of strangers. But self-pity is impossible when the darkest story of all is befalling the friends back in Germany who thought it was silly to leave.

The great consolation of the novel is family: in opposition to the orphan narratives of so much children’s literature, Anna is richly parented – reassured that as long as the four of them remain together, nothing disastrous can happen. This is both a truth and a myth constructed to conceal the third odyssey of the novel: Judith Kerr’s own journey towards a mature understanding of the horrors from which her parents so carefully protected her.

In a sense, Anna’s parents are the orphans, cut off by history from their mother country and tongue. Father’s distraction and mother’s domestic incompetence are symptoms of a disinheritance and a distress that the adult writer cannot share with her child character, but which deepen and complicate this perceptive novel, carrying it way beyond the age group for which it is technically intended.